“But look,” Forest said, still catching his breath. “You crumbled the walls enough to make a slope. We might be able to make it to the hatch.”
“It would be a battlefield once we made it to the top,” Uriel pointed out. “Are you ready to take human lives?”
“I’m ready to get the hell out of here,” Forest said grimly. “Whatever it takes.”
“Nice try, assholes!” A bald-headed goon appeared in the hatch, sneering down at them. He dropped a canister through the hatch and waved bye-bye to them with an evil snicker as he slammed the door shut. The canister hit the ground like a stone, bursting into a fine, pink spray.
“No water in here,” Uriel said blankly. “No reservoirs. No escape.”
“The hole!” Forest realized. “Come on, there’s got to be a little air in there.”
But when they reached the spot where they’d dug, they found the hole filled. The blast from the force field had loosened the dirt, causing a landslide, completely undoing their work. The pink spray filled the air, sinking low into the bottom of the pit.
“We need to go up,” Forest said, but it was too late. His lungs filled with the pink spray, and his limbs refused to listen to him. He sank to the floor in a heavy pile, every molecule of his body buzzing with the fizzy pink chemical reaction. Uriel fell to the floor beside him, succumbing to the poison.
“This feels new,” he gasped. “What are they doing?”
“We’ll find out,” Forest replied in the seconds before his voice was stolen.
The world spun in a cinnamon bun-scented ridiculousness. Flashes of pink and white burst in his eyes, unhindered by the darkness in the pit. He could feel every hair on his body, smell every individual crawling critter in the earth around him, and hear the creak of his eyelids as they closed and opened again. Blood felt heavy and warm in his veins, and he could feel the air as it moved through his lungs. This went beyond super senses, beyond anything he’d ever experienced. Random bits of darkness took on shapes, and those shapes were outlined by neon pink squiggles. He knew it was just his mind playing tricks on him, but he couldn’t stop watching.
A gorilla-shaped spot came to life and began to fight with a giraffe-shaped spot. He blinked, trying to make the images go away, but they only changed shape. A dove and an alligator. A palm tree with six arms walking a puppy. It was the most convoluted cartoon he’d ever seen, and his eyes were glued in place.
“Are you seeing things?” Uriel whispered.
“Yes. Weird things.” Forest hadn’t felt his mouth move, but he heard his words. What on earth had they done to them this time?
Chapter Seven
The hallucinations began to frighten Forest. They would lunge at him, disappearing in a flash right before his eyes. He groped around in the dark for Uriel’s hand, squeezing it hard when he found it. The innocent touch sent electricity through his body, and he was suddenly, violently aroused. Uriel experienced the same thing, and he was on Forest in seconds, attacking his mouth, sliding his body over Forest’s. It was intoxicating. Every touch vibrated Forest to his core, he needed more, he wanted...
“Wait,” he gasped.
Uriel didn’t respond except to growl as he sank his teeth into Forest’s neck.
“Uriel! Stop, it’s what they want!”
That got through. Uriel froze then pulled away.
“What are you talking about?”
“They want you mean, they drug you. They want you sleeping, they drug you. They want you horny...”
“They drug you,” Uriel finished. “Son of a bitch.”
“But why... why would they want us...”
“Mating,” Uriel said simply, curling into a ball. “And we already played right into their hands, drug-free.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. Now what?”
Forest realized he was writhing, aching for Uriel’s touch, though the dirt around him was stimulating his senses in new and fascinating ways.
“What are the chances that I’m pregnant already?” he asked, trying to find an excuse to give in to the drugs.
“Slim,” Uriel groaned. “It can happen, but it usually doesn’t, not right off the bat, not unless everything is exactly perfect.”
“Then we can’t,” Forest said.
“I don’t know if I can help it.”
Forest didn’t, either. The hallucinations were coming a mile a minute, all sexual in design. Uriel was so close, felt so good to touch. If they could just control themselves, just wait it out a little while longer, they could overcome it. He held tight to that belief, squeezed his eyes shut, and curled into the tiniest ball that he could. The hatch opened.
“Time for dessert!” the smarmy goon called.
No, Forest thought. No more, I can’t take any more. But there was no avoiding it. The second canister burst, and they were too consumed with the previous battle to do anything to dodge the pink haze which filled the room. Screw it, he thought. It’s not like we didn’t already go there.
“Forest,” Uriel gasped, and there was danger and desperation in his voice.
Forest crawled to him and took him in his arms, giving his body over to him. Uriel unleashed a furious lust that dwarfed even Forest’s, and they tangled on the floor, shifting from human to werewolf and back again, losing themselves in the chemically compounded lust. They spent hours writhing together on the floor, coming over and over, even after their bodies were utterly spent they couldn’t stop. Forest wondered absently if he would die here, his overstressed heart giving out under the strain of another consecutive dry orgasm.
But that was not his fate, not today. Ever so slowly, the effects of the drug began to fade. They curled up together on the floor, sobbing with the effort to keep breathing. Within moments, they were both asleep.
They awoke the next morning... or afternoon, there was really no way to be sure, to a box full of provisions. They ate and drank in silence, hung over from the drug and the superhuman amount of sex. There didn’t seem to be anything left to say. Animus had won, and they would be forced to bear children for him to experiment on. The image sent a dull, aching rage through Forest. He knew he couldn’t let that happen. But he also knew that he was going to have to get out of here if he had any chance of escaping that fate. Animus had the advantage; he could keep them distracted with hallucinations and sex for as long as he wanted to. In that condition, they were no good for anything else, especially not planning or enacting their escape.
“I don’t want to die in here,” he said quietly. “And I don’t want to give Animus babies.”
“Neither do I,” Uriel agreed. “We’re going to have to find a way to shut down that barrier.”
Forest lifted the liter of water that had been included with the food.
“We could try to short it out,” he said. “But we’re going to have to get close. Really close. Close enough to get blasted.”
“So how do we find it without blasting back and closing it again?”
Forest thought for a minute, tilting the liter of water back and forth in his hands.
“We’ll try digging slowly,” he said. “See if we get a sense of where it is before we hit it. I wish we had something metal we could shove in front of us and kind of reroute the electricity, maybe weaken the field? I don’t know. I’m no electrician.”
“We do,” Uriel said, hope coloring his voice in spite of himself. “Those goddamn canisters!”
“Yes! You’re a genius!”
Forest grabbed his face and kissed him gently; their mouths were still raw from the night before. They crawled around on the ground until they found the canisters then moved to the other side of the room where they had begun to dig.
“Okay, so it was about three feet in. We should dig a couple of feet and then use the canisters as a sort of barrier, I guess? Shove them in, dig, shove a little more, like that.”
Uriel agreed, and they began to dig. They dug slowly and carefully this time, tensing slightly as each new layer of d
irt fell away. Uriel felt the buzz of electricity first, and shoved the canister ahead. They hadn’t thought it through enough; Uriel was blasted backwards by the force of the electric current coursing through the canister.
“Uriel!” Forest cried.
Uriel picked himself up and shook himself. “I’m alright,” he told Forest. “Keep going.”
Electricity buzzed over the canister, and Forest wondered if he could use it and the water to short out the system. He took a step back and opened the container, focusing on the dull red glow of the heating metal. He took a deep breath and tossed the water out of the bottle and onto the canister with as much force as he could.
What happened next would live in his memory for all eternity. The entire wall exploded in a dozen lightning strikes, blowing the earth up and forward, only to bring it back down again. Forest was launched across the narrow space, colliding with Uriel.
“Shift!” Uriel screamed.
It sounded like a whisper, but Forest did as he was told, curling into a furry ball as he did so with his back to the cascading blasts. The landslide began in earnest, and Uriel tugged on his arm, showing him how to swim up against the fluid dirt. Earth crushed his legs as he dragged his arms over and over, pulling himself up so he was always head and shoulders above the dirt. A ray of sunlight hit his eyes only to be snuffed out an instant later by a ton of dirt falling into Forest’s face. He was buried alive. He panicked, scraping at the cocoon of earth, wriggling like a worm, but he couldn’t seem to make a dent. His air was running out.
He strained with every fiber to reach the surface, but the darkness overwhelmed him. His mundane life flashed before his eyes, and in that moment the only thing that stood out to him was the time he’d spent with Uriel. He needed to get back to Uriel. He was falling into himself, choking on the dirt, losing his grip. He couldn’t move, he couldn’t breathe; he wished death would come swiftly or not at all. He lay for an eternity, trapped in the earth, his body slowly caving in as the pressure increased.
Something changed. He was moving, but not of his own accord. For a moment, he thought that he was falling into Hell. A bright, red light glowed ahead of him, and he was certain. There was a thunderous pressure on his heart, like a sledgehammer. But where was it coming from? His bones broke in his chest, and he suddenly knew he couldn’t be dead yet. He wouldn’t feel his bones break if he was dead, would he?
A kiss. Someone kissed his mouth, and his lungs inflated with fire. He screamed, choking on the dirt in his throat. Someone rolled him as he vomited, from his belly, from his lungs, choking on the dirt and dust and decay that had been lodged in his body. He gasped for air and opened his eyes, closing them immediately as the sunlight sliced through them. He couldn’t hear, he couldn’t see, and he still couldn’t breathe, but the pain wracking his body told him that he was most definitely alive.
Someone rolled him back, away from the brown slime he’d expelled, and made him sit up. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking away the sunbursts. A naked man with a dark five o’clock shadow was looking at him worriedly. It took Forest a moment to recognize him; though they’d spent days together, he’d never actually seen Uriel’s face. He looked to be somewhere between thirty and forty, with thin lines etched over his otherwise smooth face. He had just the slightest hint of grey at his temples, giving him an authoritative air. The only part of him that showed his age were his eyes. In the daylight, Forest could see centuries of pain, love, loss, and rebirth in those eyes.
Forest fell into those eyes, into the darkness glinting in the center of them. He felt as though he’d passed through a portal, into another world. He blinked rapidly, and Uriel’s face snapped back into focus. Something was wrong with it. Something was wrong with everything. It was as if the world had been replaced with a sketchy cartoon version of itself. He got used to it quickly; he figured the extended lack of oxygen had altered his perceptions.
Uriel’s mouth was moving. He was trying to say something, but Forest still couldn’t hear. He shook his head and instantly regretted it. His equilibrium was all off. Finally, Uriel stopped talking and simply took his hand, yanking him to his feet and leading him quickly into the thick woods before them. Uriel kept glancing behind them. They crested a hill, and Uriel shifted, gesturing for Forest to do the same. Forest didn’t know if he could, not with his busted chest and battered body, but he made an effort.
Pain. So much pain. The second he tried to shift, it brought him to his knees. Uriel scooped him up into his arms and ran faster than Forest thought was possible. He clung to Uriel tightly, tangling his stubby human fingers into Uriel’s glorious mane. He didn’t know how far they went, but the jostling from Uriel’s feet pounding the earth made him feel like he would throw up or blow apart at the seams or both. Finally, Uriel began to slow.
Once he stopped, he gently pried Forest’s fingers from his mane. He nodded ahead of him, and Forest blinked. They were at a crystal clear pool, fed by a narrow waterfall that tumbled off of an impossibly high peak. Swans, hummingbirds, and... he looked up... yes, even the hawks. The world had changed again; no longer was it sketched and cartoonish. Now it was simply a technicolor version of impossible. He shot a confused look at Uriel, who unceremoniously dumped him in the water.
It felt like heaven. Perfectly warm water rinsed the compacted earth out of and off of his body. His chest expanded, knitting itself together. He came up for breath and went back under, thrilled over finally being clean. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had a bath or a shower; though it had certainly been before he’d arrived at the facility.
Uriel dove in beside him, washing his body. He shifted back and forth a few times, rinsing his thick fur in the perfect water. He looked impossible; a black, glossy beast, floating weightlessly in a crystal-clear pool. He was a picture. Forest was so lost in the image that he nearly forgot to breathe. He broke the surface in a mild panic, and as the water drained out of his ears, the sounds of the forest called to him. It was exactly the way it had always been in his mind. Everything he’d ever imagined was here, in this space.
“I’m dead,” he said blankly. “This must be heaven.”
Chapter Eight
Uriel floated up out of the pool like an angel.
“You aren’t dead,” he argued. “If you were dead, where would I be?”
“Probably dead too,” Forest said. “Look at you. You’re floating.”
“I am? Oh, look at that.” Uriel lowered himself to the ground. His face began to shift strangely, back and forth from human to wolf, blurring at the edges and the in-betweens until it had entirely restructured itself to look like a double exposure.
“A little coma,” Uriel said in Jane’s voice. “But not dead yet.”
His face changed again, and he became Animus. “Were we successful?”
His face was his own then, but watery and unstable.
“No way to know, not yet. Give it a couple weeks and we’ll be able to tell. Go on now, the patient needs his rest.”
Uriel’s face snapped back into its familiar shape and he grinned.
“What was that?” Forest whispered.
“What do you think it was?”
“I... well...”
“Come on, you know the answer. You always know the answer. That water thing? Pure genius. I mean, it would have been if it had worked. I guess it did work, it all depends on how you define ‘working’... it blew apart well enough, but you went and killed me in the process.”
“I... killed you?”
“Come on, you know you did. You catapulted right into me. Cracked my chest. Punctured my lung. I’m lying in the bottom of the pit, fading away.”
“You’re lying,” Forest said heatedly. “If I survived, you did too.”
“But did you survive? Or is this the afterlife playing tricks on you? Giving you hope, making you think there’s a chance you can wake up again? You can’t, you know. But that’s alright, isn’t it? You’re here, in your most treasured private place, an
d I’m here with you. We can swim and play forever, and we’ll never have to worry about Animus ever again.”
“But what about Bianca?”
“What about her? She’s probably dead too, living in her own little heavenly garden.”
“That... that isn’t what Uriel would say.”
“Isn’t it? You seem to think it is. If I’m not real, then I’m all in your head, which means whatever I say is what you think I would say. What you want me to say.”
“Then what do I want you to say right now?”
Uriel closed the space between them in a heartbeat, without moving his feet. He cupped Forest’s face in his hands and gazed deep into his eyes, the golden ring shining bright within the brown.
“I love you,” Uriel said, sending a warm shiver over Forest. “And we’ll be together forever.”
“Wrong answer,” Forest sighed, suddenly depressed.
“That’s what you wanted to hear, isn’t it?”
“Of course. That’s why it was wrong. You knew what I wanted to hear. You said it, and you shouldn’t have. Uriel and I haven’t... We aren’t... It was only impending apocalypse sex, that’s all. Uriel’s heart is still closed off. Besides all that, he actually moves his feet when he walks. Which means this is just my own mind, which means I might still be trapped in the earth or lying helpless on one of Animus’ hospital beds... Probably that last one, considering that trick you just did with your face. It also means that I’m not dead. At least I think that’s what it means. And if I survived, maybe you survived. I know I didn’t kill you on impact, I can remember that much. You were moving, swimming up against the falling dirt.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Uriel said, sitting cross-legged in the air. “Maybe you’re right, then. Maybe we’re both trapped in comas.”
“So how do we get out?”
“This isn’t like a cell or a pit, Forest. You can’t trick or blast your way to freedom. You have to give your brain and body time to heal.”
“That’s not good enough,” Forest said stubbornly. “Uriel—the real Uriel—could be dead or hurt somewhere. I need to make sure he’s okay, and then I need to get us out of here.”
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